OPEN CALL: Artistic, Digital Contributions for Spielraum – the 2025 Days of the Independent Performing Arts Community in Berlin

The second edition of Spielraum – the 2025 Days of the Independent Performing Arts Community in Berlin will take place from September 10 to 21, 2025. For this event, we are on the lookout for artistic, digital contributions that will accompany the Days of the Independent Performing Arts Community in Berlin across and beyond the schedule of programming and allow it to expand into digital space.

Spielraum is an annual campaign that is created jointly by the community and coordinated by the Berlin Performing Arts Program. It offers a diverse schedule of programming full of mediative audience formats that take place parallel to the regular schedule of programming on stage and that invite the audience to experience the independent performing arts community from new perspectives. In doing so, the focus will be placed on the locations of the independent performing arts community as places for encounters between a variety of audiences and communities, as places for exchanges as well as for societal transformation. 

You can find more information about Spielraum here: freie-szene-tage.de/en

What Is Being Looked for With This Open Call?

We are on the lookout for artistic, digital contributions that will bring Spielraum into digital space, accompanying and moving beyond the schedule of programming – by using, for example, visual, auditory and/or interactive elements that react in an artistic manner to the topics, atmospheres or locations of Spielraum, which bring them together into connection with each other or which continue to reflect upon them independently. 

Here are some examples of possible formats:

• Thematically suitable elements that can be used for social media posts about Spielraum
• A (short) game, video, interactive tool or a graphic element that can be integrated on the landing page of Spielraum
• A format or element that, with the participation of the audience, builds a bridge between the analog schedule of programming of Spielraum and digital space
• … and much, much more – we are very open to experimental formats!
   

We Are on the Lookout for Contributions that…

• Make Spielraum able to be experienced digitally, above and beyond the schedule of programming (in order to provide you with some orientation in terms of content, you can find last year’s schedule of programming on the Spielraum website),
• Can be realized before, during and/or immediately after Spielraum (September 10 to 21, 2025),
• Can be realized primarily independently by those submitting the idea
   

Who Is This Open Call Intended For?

• All members of Berlin’s independent performing arts community
   

What Has To Be Submitted?

• A brief project sketch (max. 1 page in A4 size, including visual materials, in German or in English)
• A short description of the people involved and/or organization(s), including web links
   

And How Do Things Continue From Here?

• As a first step, the Berlin Performing Arts Program will select one or more suitable submissions and ask the people who submitted it or them to elaborate their project sketch into a complete concept in exchange for a fee of € 350.00.
• After this, one of the elaborated concepts will be selected for realization during this year’s edition of Spielraum. The realization of the corresponding digital contribution will be commissioned by the Berlin Performing Arts Program and correspondingly remunerated.

Application Deadline

Please send your submissions by July 2, 2025, with the subject heading “Digitalbeitrag” to: spielraum [at] pap-berlin.de.